


Oscar Wilde Deserves Better

by somegunemojis



Series: Tender Mercies [18]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Bad Jokes, Drinking (ir)Responsibly, M/M, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:35:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26270500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somegunemojis/pseuds/somegunemojis
Summary: Three dudes, not cuddling and getting very drunk for very heterosexual reasons.
Relationships: Alessio Rossi & Rainer Gersten, Bettino Tahan & Rainer Gersten, Bettino Tahan/Alessio Rossi
Series: Tender Mercies [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893175
Comments: 1





	Oscar Wilde Deserves Better

September, 2014 [LOCATION REDACTED]

They drink late into the night. Rain pounds on the canvas of their little tent, and the others have long since gone to bed, but the three of them are still wired. Today marked Gersten’s last assignment with the KSK, he’s going back to Germany in the morning and getting discharged soon after. The goodbye party was a little bittersweet-- he’s relatively well liked by the men on base, and in their little mixed unit, and a lot of people showed up to drink booze and clap him on the shoulder and wish him luck. A younger soldier had nervously asked him what he was planning on doing when he got out, and Gersten had laughed aloud and replied only, “Oh, probably be a hitman. I only have the one skill.” Everyone had laughed. 

Tahan wishes he could believe the other man had been kidding. Rossi had just sighed. 

They’re all more than half drunk, now. Laying on the cool plywood floor in their little temporary shelter. Tahan has been counting the sandbags lining the walls, but he kept forgetting where he’d been at and what number he stopped counting because Rossi’s nails would occasionally scrape his scalp, and it would make his vision go funny. He has his head resting in the younger man’s lap. No commentary is made on how he’s basically petting him. Gersten’s legs are draped over his shins, long and lean, and he has a hand resting on Tahan’s ankle. Occasionally he’ll make a broad gesture as he speaks, their little triangle ill-formed and sloppy drunk. 

It’s lulling him to sleep. He must be getting old, if he can’t make it to five in the morning like the rest of the party animals. The livelier of the two are helpfully keeping their voices down, until-- Gersten’s hand clamps down on his hip, and he roughly shakes him awake.

“Fuck me--” Tahan starts into foggy awareness, jerking into a sitting position. Rossi lets him go with a displeased grunt, and he’s already turning to give him an apologetic look when he spots the bottle in Gersten’s hand. “What the fuck is that.” 

The pale man bares all of his teeth at him in a grin. There’s a vague creeping sense of dread. “It’s all the rest of the alcohol.”

A long pause, in which Tahan can only look helplessly between a grinning Gersten, and a nonplussed Rossi. Neither of them make a move to elaborate. Finally, he manages to find the courage necessary to ask, “How do you mean--”

Rossi, unimpressed, cuts off both the rest of his question, and Gersten before he can start in on his bullshit. “He’s spent the last ten minutes meticulously pouring every last drop of whiskey, tequila, vodka, vermouth, and absinthe into that bottle.” 

Gersten, maturely, pouts for a moment, before brightening again. “And beer! I put beer--” A hiccup. “Beer in it, too.” He swirls it a little, as if to make a point. The concoction bubbles and fizzes menacingly within its confines. 

“I--” unsure, he glances between the pair of them. Rossi’s eyebrows nearly meet his hairline, and Gersten continues to shake the bottle back and forth, as if to be enticing. He tries not to feel sick from just looking at the sloshing liquid, but he can’t help the dread tinging his voice. “For what purpose?” 

The bottle of possibly toxic waste is thrust in his direction. Tahan takes it warily, and Gersten laughs out, “You and I are going to finish this off. Rossi says you’re a lightweight, and that it would kill you.” 

“I’m not fucking doing that, because I am and it will.” Rossi lets out a relieved sigh behind him. 

Gersten whines, “Aw, no it won’t, pussy. I dare you.” 

The gauntlet has been thrown down. Tahan sits up straighter, and turns to him with narrowed eyes. “You dare me? Are you serious?” Despite his incredulous tone, he eyes the bottle and then starts twisting off the cap-- it smells like a sewer, and he coughs a little. Rossi makes a noise of abject terror.

“Don’t let him get to you-- he just doesn’t understand that daring each other to consume disgusting and possibly dangerous liquids is an important part of male bonding.” Gersten leans forward, practically vibrating with excitement as the words fall out of him in a rush.

Rossi, who was the eldest of four brothers and probably understand male bonding better than either of them, snorts and puts his hand over the lip of the bottle before it makes it all the way to Tahan’s mouth. “Oh? And what are the other parts?”

“Yearning,” says Rainer. 

“Gay chicken,” says Bettino.

They glance at each other after their simultaneous answers and burst into wild laughter, collapsing against one another and nearly spilling the concoction. Rossi looks on, arms crossed, a smile poorly smothered on his lips. His voice is wracked with suppressed humor. “All of the literature and art and thought about male friendship and desire, and the two of you have pared it down to ‘drinking gross alcohol’, ‘ yearning’, and ‘gay chicken’. Bravo, really. Wilde would be so proud.” 

Tahan lifts the bottle as if to toast the observations, the advancements they have made in such heavy schools of thought, and Rossi throws himself against his side, nearly bowling him over, and drags the cursed thing from his hand. “You have had quite enough, I think,” he tuts at him, pressed warmly hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder. Tahan lets himself slump a little, blinking placidly at the line of his cheekbone. Rossi slams the handle back, and then chokes a little when it goes down, spluttering, “that is vile. You’re going to hell.” 

The abrupt frankness with which he says it-- and the fact that such sentiments rarely come from him at all, staunch catholic boy that he is, forces a sharp, shocked bark of laughter out of his two companions. He spends the next ten minutes trying to force some of it down Gersten’s gullet, and Tahan… 

Well, Tahan has no trouble at all letting their racket lull him to back to sleep.


End file.
